Ifollow Rafe through the blizzard. He carries the jerry cans and I shoulder the backpack as the wind howls and the snow lashes sideways. It stings my face. My cheeks go numb, but my dread only sharpens, persisting even when we reach the maze and the tall hedges offer relief.
A strange hush settles around us. I switch on my flashlight and shine it on the diagram I took from the gardening shed. We move forward, the makeshift weapons clipped to my backpack tapping together with each step. The snow is shallower in here except at the intersections, where drifts have accumulated and the occasional gust whistles through gaps in the hedges.
Using the diagram, we navigate into the heartof the maze, where the walls loom tall and dark around a clearing and the storm fades to a low, distant moan. My flashlight catches swirling flakes as it sweeps across a stone bench covered in snow and a fountain capped in white, the broken sundial in the center almost completely swallowed.
I drop my backpack and pull out my phone to check on Jude and the others. They are getting closer to the rift. Once Jude is inside the Overlay, he will send word and I will open a rift right here. Rafe and I will step through with our backpack and the jerry cans. We will douse the maze in gasoline from the inside out, then head to the Water Garden where I will lure Vorat away.
“There’s something undeniably poetic about a sickle,” Rafe says. Only he doesn’t unclip the sickle. He unclips the pruning saw. He snaps it open and runs his thumb along its jagged blade. “But this feels more honest.”
I round on him. “Can you please not be so blasé right now?”
He lifts his eyebrows.
“You’re always acting like nothing matters. Is it real or for show?”
Rafe turns the saw in his gloved hand. “When you’ve been around as long as I have, you start to appreciate the truth of Ecclesiastes. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
“Ironically, you can’t.”
“Oh, but Selah. I can.”
His words take a second to land, and when they do, I’m certain I misheard him. When I search his face, however, I find nothing but candor.
“I assumed I would cease to exist along with Seraphina,” he says, his frozen breath curling in the dark. “My life tethered to hers and all. Turns out, it was my immortality.”
His immortality.
I blink, taking in the implications.
“But how did you—” I stop abruptly. I don’t need to finish. I remember what I saw all too well. The claw marks on his chest.
“I came very close to meeting my end.”
“And you’re willing to go back?”
Rafe plants the saw’s tip in the snow beside his boot, snowflakes clinging to his dark lashes as he gives me a careless shrug.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Why?”
“Perhaps I want things to matter again,” he says, looking at me with such intensity the hedges seem to press closer.
He snaps the saw shut. “How good are you with a blade?”
“I can’t say I’ve had much experience.”
He unclips the machete and sets it in my palm. With his hands guiding my hips and his eyes neverleaving mine, he gives me an impromptu lesson. I’m not sure what’s more unsettling—the precision of his instruction or the intimacy of it. In one fluid movement, he steps behind me and coaxes my arm upward. With my back pressed against his chest, he says softly in my ear, “Whatever you do, don’t hesitate.”
My breath catches.
I, myself, feel caught.
Heat trembles in my abdomen.
Inside my pocket, my phone vibrates.
With a rush of urgency, I step away from Rafe to read the message.
In position. Vorat in line of vision. Prisoners, too.
